Adventures in Babysitting

Upon arriving at my parent's house today, I learned that my father was being interviewed for some amature documentary about people who haves homes, or something along that line, and that I was to be very very quiet and out of the way. I twisted his arm so that he would give me 7 bucks to go get a Vietnamese sandwich for lunch and took off.

When I returned I found that the documentary maker brought with him his 9 month old son who was now crawling around my parent's very un-child-proofed house. They haven't needed child proofing in like... 19 years, and as it has just been the two adults living in the house for the past 4 years, all of the edges have become sharper and the scissors have gotten closer and closer to the ground. It then became my job to babysit for the next hour.

The little boy was very cute, as I think, most 9 month old babies are. He was half Asian and half Black and hate cute little chubby cheeks and puffy lips and small jello-like baby legs. When he smiled his whole face lit up, and he smelled, like all babies should when they have the luxury of a clean diaper.

When I first sat down with the toddler, I put him as far back on my parent's couch as I could, I kinda... stuffed him in the corner pocket and handed him my cell phone. That entertained him for about 15 minutes. He kept slapping my cell phone, throwing the TV remote control and singing to me. I of course found things to do with him in those first 15 minutes like play the obnoxious game where the adult in the situation (me... cringe) picked up a stuffed animal and made kissey noises with it against the baby in the situation's face. He seemed to like that enough, but like any boy in the world had enough of the cutsey kissey frog... and me very quickly.

He spotted my cat and of course, wanted to play with her. My cat does not have the best track record in playing with others. I think, if she had gone to kitty school, she would have gotten "F"s in conduct until they finally kicked her furry ass out for kicking the shit out of anyone who looked her way. Needless to say, when this toddler flopped on his stomach and began to dangle himself off of my parent's sofa and swat the air between him and my cat's nose, I got very very nervous. When I tried to pull him away from my cat he screamed at me, saying what I can only presume was in baby "LEMME EAT HER!" and flopped back. He did this for a good two minutes until I found another way to distract him.

This time I decided to take him on a walk around the house and bounce him up and down. He liked the bouncing, though I'm not sure why babies like that, it would probably make me nauseous. Don't bounce me or I'll puke on you. I stopped by a spot on the wall where my mom, some years ago in an effort to be cute, had cut out a red heart and taped it on the wall for Valentine's Day. Babies like colors and shapes right? So I brought it to his attention so that he could marvel at the color. Shouldn't babies just coo and giggle when they see something they like like a big red heart? SHOULDN'T THEY? I guess not.

This baby reached out and ripped the heart off of the wall and proceeded to try and shank me with it. He wadded it up in his fat little hand and started slapping me with the sharper edges of the paper. Death by paper cut. I think that's what he was going for. I ran over to the television and thankfully it got his attention long enough for me to switch the paper into his other hand so that when he began stabbing at the air again it was in the direction of the teletubbies and not my face.

I finally sat us back down where he happily played with what used to be my mother's home decor. I looked up for one second, then back down to see him stick the crumpled up paper heart into his mouth and take a bite out of it. Kid, seriously, you shouldn't eat paper. I lunged for the heart, threw it behind me and looked back at him to see, with horror, that he had a piece of it in his mouth. I've seen plenty of mothers in my life stick a finger in their kids' mouths to scoop out something they shouldn't have in there, so I decided it should be easy and stuck my finger inside his mouth.

THIS KID HAS SOME RAZOR SHARP CHOMPERS! He bit down, disregarding the fact that my finger was now lodged in his mouth and continued to do so. I'm sure he was trying to eat me. He bit really hard and even when I pinched his cheeks together to get him to stop chewing, the second I stuck my finger in his mouth his teeth somehow came smashing down on it! I almost lost my finger. I decided that he could KEEP the piece of paper in his mouth and if he choked on it, it would be his own damn fault. Friggin' little kid. I'm trying to SAVE YOUR LIFE HERE!

Next he decides that he wants to try standing. So he makes me put him on the floor, then he holds onto my legs trying to pull himself up on his feet. Only, his legs are still made of jello and he can't pull them up under him or straighten them to hold himself up. So of course, this is all my fault, right? So he starts yelling at me in his baby language "You wouldn't let me eat your cat, or your phone, or your fingers... the only thing you let me do was almost die of eating paper and now you won't let me stand, I hate you!" Wow, they sure learn to say the H word early these days. I blame Noggin.

So I say back, "Look kid, your legs... they're not so sturdy right now. You're pretty much made of jello and poop, and that's just not my fault. It took me a good 21 years to learn to use my legs. You can't just decide at nine months old that you're gonna stand on dessert legs. You should just stop, and stop yelling at me, and take your clubbed feet and crawl on. Here's that weird feather toy that your dad brought you here with. Its cool, go play".

Very logical right? It was my best hostage negotiation voice, too. I even gave him a toy to play with in the end. If I were a baby I would have just cut my losses and rolled away. No. Instead he sinks his baby nails (why are their nails so fucking sharp?!) into my calves and tries harder to pull himself up. Since obviously his legs don't work he decides to bite my knee and hold himself up that way. Oh small children and your stupid victories.


After about an hour his father came out and he was once again smiles and sunshine and he kept holding his arms out to me like he missed me or something. I'm so glad he was strapped into his stroller. He might've tried to come get me.

Babies.